This very special visit to the Digi Lab sees Biffo, Gannon and Ashens attempting to make elephant's toothpaste, and introduces an experimental new character to the show - Beanus!

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I bought my Mega Drive through the Special Reserve mail-order catalogue, for £189 in 1990. It came strapped to Altered Beast, and with it I also ordered Super Thunder Blade. To be honest, neither game was much cop, and nor were the next couple I bought; EA'S risible Budokan and Sword of Sodan (more like "Sods of Sod-off").

Based upon these travesties, there was strong evidence that Sega's Mega Drive, the successor to my beloved Master System, was a proverbial "dirty son". Had I not already spent a great deal of money that I didn't have on it, it's highly likely I'd have propelled the thing into the nearest dog toilet.

It wasn't until I picked up Revenge of Shinobi and Castle of Illusion that I started to think purchasing the Mega Drive might've been worth it. Broadly, they both marked a turning point, and from then onwards *most* of what I bought for the console justified the initial outlay.

Truth is, the Mega Drive always had a much higher tat-to-good ratio than its eventual rival, the Super NES. Sega, by its own admission, was far more relaxed about quality, preferring a noisy, edgy, catalogue where quantity filled the trousers.

During the years of the great 16-bit console wars, this approach obscured many - myself included - to the fact that there were many genuinely great Mega Drive games, It's only now, with the benefit of several decades of hindsight, that Sega's 16-bit homunculoid has become sort of universally beloved, bitter divisions, and frustration with Sega's policies, seeming so unimportant in an era where not a day can unfurl without some new gaming drama.

Given this renaissance, it's inevitable that Sega has finally gotten around to pumping out a proper Mega Drive Mini, in the vein of Nintendo's NES and Super NES nostalg-o-replicas. And get this: it costs just £69 - the rudest price, which also happened to be the exact same RRP Virtua Racing sold for when it was released for the Mega Drive in 1994. 

In the Digitiser science lab this week, Biffo and Gannon open a mysterious box - containing all the dry ice they could ever need for a series of exciting and dangerous experiments!

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Hey - who remembers when I did a big, self-indulgent, blog post about being bored of writing about video games, and then the very next day I wrote about video games? No-one - you don't remember, because it's happening now. Yes: right now!

You're reading it as it happens.

Perhaps in the days, weeks, months, and decades to come... you'll look back upon this time, nod to yourself, scurry to 'n' fro across the dirty tunnel where you live like a pig, and mutter: "Yes... yes, that is a memory that I am having..."

In 1995 I bought my first PC purely to play Star Wars: Dark Forces, and it was the best money I ever spent. I was hooked on first-person shooters - or "Doom clones" as your grandmother used to call them - and a Doom clone that cosplayed as Star Wars was irresistible.

I loved Dark Forces in a way that was extreme and unseemly, and the relatively bland mercenary Kyle Katarn was a solid addition to the Star Wars pantheon. Much more so than that smug, shoulder-padded, strutter Dash Render from Shadows of the Empire. 

Honestly, who dresses like that? He looked like he was wearing a padded cell.

Apologies to those of you who read this site hoping to read stuff about video games, and keep clicking to find instead these kind of personal blog posts about me figuring out the direction of all things Digitiser.

We're coming up on five years since I brought Mr Biffo and Digitiser out of retirement, and it feels like it's time to shake things up in a dramatic way. 

I'm going away at the end of next week for a bit, so there'll be a little break in service for a while. That's probably good, and the right time for it. I think we all need it. 

Some of you will have noticed that I've announced that the Digitiser videos are dropping down to one a week. I'd just had a feeling in my gut that the audience was struggling to keep up with two a week... and this was confirmed by a couple of polls I did over the weekend. Overwhelmingly, most people wanted less. 

I know a few of you are disappointed, but it's going to give me more time to work on the edits, and "plus" the eps a bit. What that means... I don't yet know, but it feels like we're just getting started with them.

What's more, I've now got a clearer sense of direction, which is what I've been searching for of late.

Digi's YouTube audience seems to be waking up to the fact that the channel's shift away from video games might not be a temporary thing. In the last week we've had the first comments saying that people miss us talking about old retro gaming tat. 

That's fine.

​I mean, I knew not everyone was going to appreciate two men arsing around with balloons - the video that seems to have been the final straw for a fair few people - but I also think it's important that I keep creating what I most strongly feel the urge to create. I knew full well that there's a sort of meta joke in the latest Digi video about a failed balloon modelling video being terrible content, and either you get that or you don't.

It's telling that while we lost a lot of subscribers in the wake of it... we gained just as many too.

In all honesty, if writing the original Digitiser for Teletext hadn't been my job, there's no way it would've had as much gaming content as it did have.

I've never really identified with being that sort of hardcore gamer. I've always felt I was someone on the fringes of gaming, who just ended up somehow working as a games journalist.

Having said that, it's important to state here that we've no real strategy for either this website or the YouTube channel, beyond wanting to enjoy ourselves. It might be that we shift back to gaming videos at some point, or we mix gaming vids in among the others.

I honestly don't know, because I tend to work on instinct, and I'm not trying to build a career here, or even, particularly, try and grow the channel. I've already got a career where I have to wear my grown-up hat, and I'd always take a dedicated smaller cult audience over a larger, take-it-or-leave-it, one. At the moment, I'm enjoying editing and being in these short videos more than anything else, so that's where my energies are going.

Earlier this year I was talking about Digitiser The Show Series 2, but now that I'm at a point where I could, conceivably, have the time to launch a Kickstarter for it... if I listen to my gut, the enthusiasm isn't there to step into the crowdfunding arena again. I need to have my blood up in order to take on a project of that magnitude.

I've talked a bit recently about feeling kind of burnt-out after a tough and busy year, but there are other things at play, really, and they come back to what I said above about feeling on the fringes.

GUEST REVIEW by PAUL GANNON

Upfront, I want to just state something to add a little bit of background to where I am at as a person who “casually” enjoys video games: The Binding of Issac has ruined gaming for me forever.

I can’t stop playing it. It has become a genuine problem.

I bought the game a few years ago when I finally managed to get my hands on a cheap Wii-U. I’d seen a few “Let’s Plays” and enjoyed what I’d seen, and wanted to get my hands on it. I was intrigued by the dungeon crawling, the whole “roguelike” thing and the amazing way the power-ups are random and can be stacked to create all kinds of exciting combinations. It was love at first sight.

Except now I am obsessed. When BoI finally came out for the 3DS, I bought it again. When it arrived on the Switch, I once again splashed out on yet another version of the game that, by now, had taken up 1000s of hours of my attention.

I’m no expert at the game, but I love the crap out of it. Here is the problem though; I’ve not given my attention to any other game in my collection. Those games sit there and gather dust, yearning for my time, but I ignore their pleas. Sod ‘em. I can pick up BoI and dive in for about an hour, have a proper good time, and then plop it down again. It was addictive. It was a quick hit of something that brought me a lot of satisfaction, and no other game could compete.

All my DS and 3DS games don’t get my love any more. There are scores of Switch games I’ve bought, spent good money on, and yet can’t face picking up to play. To be fair, I don’t know why I bought “L.A Noire” knowing full well I didn’t want to engage in its plot and game mechanics. It felt a game I had to get for the Switch just so I could feel I had a few “mature” titles in my collection.

Also, please spare a thought for “Doom”, which currently sits on a shelf begging for engagement. It’s a pretty brilliant FPS that I can’t believe they crammed on the Switch, and I’ve had fun with it… BUT. IT’S. NOT. BINDING. OF. ISAAC.

Here is the thing: I don’t think I would love BoI as much as I do were it not for one game from my childhood that changed my view of gaming forever… “Link’s Awakening”.

There are countless essays and YouTube videos on this Game Boy title, but if you know nothing else about the game, just know it’s a classic game as important as (insert some important game here) and of course (Some other game, I dunno. Put your own in).

​The Binding of Isaac is what happens if you took a traditional top down “Legend of Zelda” game and boiled it down to a thick, sweet, powerful reduction of the original dungeon crawling concept. It’s a shot of vodka to Zelda’s pint of frothy ale.